Knapp picked to replace Greenberg

Patrick Knapp is coming home.

"Born and raised in Philadelphia -- Germantown Hospital, 1953," he said after being introduced as the new coach of the Penn women's basketball team yesterday afternoon.

Knapp spent the last 18 years as the head coach at Georgetown University. He compiled a 248-264 record in his time in Washington, including two Big East championships.

He said that there are similarities between Georgetown and Penn that will help his transition between the schools.

"At both institutions, both administrations want you to do things the right way, to treat the student athletes with dignity and respect, to be concerned with their academics," he said.

Knapp also said that he would try hard to maintain those aspects of last year's team that brought the Quakers an Ivy League title.

"If the 'two play' works, whatever the 'two play' is, it worked all last year, and the same people are running it, why wouldn't we run the 'two play?'" he said. "It would be stupid not to."

Although Knapp would not make any specific predictions about how he thought the upcoming season would go, he did set some lofty goals.

"We want to repeat in the Ivy League and we want to win the Big 5," he said. "I know that's not easy -- I know the RPIs of those teams, I've played Villanova twice a year forever."

He admitted that "we hav some work to do," but added that "you don't go into a circumstance and not have those goals -- if you are in a league, your goal is to win the league."

Knapp's predecessor, Kelly Greenberg, won two Ivy League titles but never managed more than one Big Five victory in a season during her five-year tenure.

Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky, speaking about the search process, expressed particular pleasure at being able to find a new coach quickly. Greenberg was announced as Boston University's new coach on July 7, exactly three weeks before the announcement's of Knapp's hiring. The 2004-05 academic year starts in just under six weeks.

"We definitely moved the search quickly -- not hastily but quickly," he said.

The reactions from Penn's players were equally positive.

"All of us have been really anxious all summer," Kammes said. "It's important to us to have someone to go up there and visit every so often."

But she added that "we're the Penn players -- we're going to be the people that make it happen on the floor."

Sophomore forward Ashley Gray praised Knapp for having "a lot of values that we think are really important."

Now those values get put to the test.

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